I'm With the Bears (17 page)

––Yes, but I didn't stop. People told me it was dangerous.

––The last time I was there––Matteo is talking again––the Crisis was very recent. You could still find petrol on the black market and I went on my moped to look at the petro-chemical plant. It was swarming with officials from the Commission. You can imagine, what with all those toxic substances about to leak out and kill everything . . . The various parts of the plant were holding up well and I've heard that they're still standing firm. They'd already stopped producing some things before the Crisis and at that time a large number of silos, full of ammonia or whatever, went missing. Carted away, goodness knows where.

––Africa, I reckon.

––Expect so, he says, but adds nothing.

A few minutes of peaceful silence follow. Tiredness flows out of my body through my pores, my muscles discharge toxins, and even my mind is restored. My eyesight becomes keener and my ears stop buzzing. My lunch companion glances up at me, but I am the first to start up the conversation again.

––You said that people around here are organizing themselves. Tell me: what does a local council do?

He snorts.

––Hah! Not much. It decides how to distribute aid, rounds up volunteers to pull up weeds in the fields. It writes to the relatives of the dead . . . I used to be a carabiniere. You can tell, can't you? When the Crisis happened I was in Cosenza. In order to get back home I took a train like the ones you used to see in documentaries, you know, like in India, with people even sitting on the roof. It took me two days. It kept stopping in little villages I'd never even heard of . . . And you, what kind of work did you do?

My other recurring dream. I am twenty-eight years old, I am writing my first novel. It is about the lives of a group of young seminarists at the time of the Second Vatican Council: forbidden loves, theological arguments, squables and disagreements, an unforeseen death. They come from peasant families––devout but not overly so––and I have to try and depict a background of popular religious sentiment. I draw on the “anthropology” of the changes taking place at that time. In fact, I am killing two birds with one stone because I'm using material from my thesis. Nothing ever gets thrown away.

In the dream, goodness knows why, I meet people I had interviewed three years earlier. They are so pleased to see me, they tell me everything, all over again, from the beginning. I say goodbye to them feeling very satisfied, aware that it will be a good book. Then I discover that all the time,
She
is hobbling along behind me: the Historian.
She
is left behind in a cloud of dust, but still recognizably me: twenty-five years old and behind with my thesis. I turn up late and nobody wants to talk to me because
I have already been there before
.

––. . . work did you do?

––I was a writer, I reply to Matteo.

––A writer? What sort of thing did you write?

––Novels. At least that's what people called them.

––Novels. And he pauses to think. I used to read them too, but I don't think I read any by women. I used to read detective stories and stuff like that.

––Yes, before the Crisis they were very popular. But who'd want to read books like that these days?

––That's true. So now what do you do?

Words precede thought.

––I'm still a writer, in a way, but I don't write any more.

––What a strange thing to say. What do you mean?

––That these days I don't write:
I see.

––I don't follow.

––The future. I see the future.

A pause.

––So, you're . . . What's it called? . . . A soothsayer?

––Don't know if that's the right word.

––But you see the future. Is that why you managed to dodge my cudgel? So can you tell what's in store for us?

––No. No to both your questions. I'm not interested in that kind of insignificant future.

––
Insignificant
! You say these things but I don't know what you mean. And what a funny phrase to use, “interested in” . . . I haven't heard that for a long time.

––Yes, I'm
interested in
something. In the future perfect. The one that comes after the insignificant future. I see it and I tell people about it.

––What people?

––I have a family, a very large one. I tell the future perfect, we see it together, and we all feel better. They depend on me and I'm going back to them.

––Fair enough. So, you . . . erm . . . took a holiday. I know that's not the right word. I mean that you needed to distance yourself a bit, to see the place where you were born. Is that right?

The simple thing that is difficult to say.

––Yes. That's absolutely right. Then, without preamble, I add, Do you remember how to say “great tit” in the Ferrarese dialect?

Matteo doesn't seem surprised by this reference to a local bird. He concentrates, not speaking. He looks up at the branches of the trees and the roof of the church. He stands up, takes a sip from his water-bottle and walks around slowly. Very slowly. I am no longer there, he's lost in childhood memories. Not even his, probably: his mother's. His grandmother's and even further back than that. Finally he stops and opens his eyes wide. He points his right index finger––rigid and straight as a flagpole––toward the sky. He turns toward me and exclaims:

––
Arzèstula!
But why did you ask me that? Is it something to do with the future perfect?

And at that very moment we hear it, a female great tit, and we can see it, too, on the branch of a leafless ash tree behind the parish church. Yellow and black, perfectly formed, a heartbreaking marvel of Evolution. We are left open-mouthed, here, now.

III. From the Parco della Chiusa to the
ex-motorway café, the Cantagallo, at
Casalecchio sul Reno, November 26–27

There are a lot of fallen trees and their rotten trunks block the paths, making the ground very slippery. The soles of my boots are muddy and I fall, two, three times, and when I get up again I sink up to my ankles in mud. I'm forced to make little detours to clean the soles of my boots on stones and dry twigs. On my right, a powerful river, the Reno, flows by; I can't see it but I can hear its roar, beyond this strip of woodland that lines one of its deep banks, beyond the screen of alders and willows and the tangle of reed beds.

I finally reach the bridge, a small steel walkway that is just as I had left it. I stride on to it, and then there it is, the river, and I'm overcome; the river is stereotypically blue, just as it's supposed to be, but different from everything else. It flows down from the Apennines and crosses the great plain, toward me and the places that I am leaving behind.

On the other side, the old gravel heaps belonging to the SAPABA quarry await me; now they are just hills, nothing more, covered in plants so green they hurt my eyes. But I leave them behind and quicken my pace. A sudden frenzy moves my legs along. Off with my hood, off with my scarf, I'm nearly home, home! Once upon a time there was a camp of nomads here, but nowadays the whole of Italy is one big camp of nomads. And maybe a good part of the world, too. But I am home. I turn right, I step onto one last pathway and there it is. The Cantagallo Café.

My family welcomes me joyfully. I've been gone forty days, visiting my old haunts, back to my origins, clearing my mind and my body. For weeks I had been suffering from visual disturbances, caused by waves of heat, hot flushes, which started deep inside me and pervaded my whole body. I felt them in my chest, I felt them on my neck. I turned up at the ritual tired out after sleepless nights, troubled by a burning sensation whenever I went for a pee and the friction of my exploratory fingertips on dry mucosa, everything setting me on edge. At times I would burst into tears during the storytelling, upsetting the others, bringing the whole ritual to a halt. Entering into this new stage of life stopped me from functioning properly. The menopause forced me to face my insignificant personal future, to ask myself what would become of me and my place in the world. It was a final farewell to fertility: an unexpected blow even for me. I had always been infertile because of some peculiarity of my womb. I had to stop, withdraw, withdraw and rethink everything, remember everything, far away from this place, which belongs to a different stage. I had to shake up my body, put it to the test.

––Tonight, we are going to celebrate! Eat, drink and make love! Nita announces.

It's lovely to see her again. Forty days ago, when she said goodbye to me her voice was cracked and unhappy. Now it rings out like the telephone used to when I was a child. Nita is twenty-five years old, and I'm about to turn fifty-two. We are the vice and the versa. While I was away, I know she was the one who led the ritual, who saw, who started the storytelling. I am confident she has worked well. I have taught her a lot of what I know.

A lot, yes, but not everything. There are a lot of things I do unconsciously, without thinking, so I can't teach them.

I
see
. Much more than that, I couldn't say.

I am the clairvoyant from the Cantagallo Café, the woman who leads this family, who sees and narrates distant futures. I went through my personal crisis at the time of
the
Crisis, and I have returned to where I feel better, to live with those I love, to grow old with those I love, and one day to die with those I love by my side.

Here they are, laughing, hugging and kissing me. I find the hugs from those who only have one limb very moving. They are off-balance, they remind me of the dancers in
Zorba the Greek
.

There they are, my little ones, with their illnesses, their strengths, their hopes.

I greet Antioco, who suffers from Capgras syndrome. If he looked me in the face he would not recognize me. I would look like some stranger who resembles me, a dummy made of flesh with my features. In order to love me,
in order to love anyone
, he has to close his eyes, because a person's voice,
that
always stays true. He lowers his eyelids and smiles at me.

I greet Ileana, who suffers from Fregoli syndrome. She doesn't look at me either, she moves, eyes wet with tears, towards Nita; overwhelmed by emotion, she hugs her and greets her . . . calling her by my name. Nita doesn't correct her, nor do I. It's fine as it is.

I greet Ezio, who is nearly blind but doesn't know it, he refuses to know it. He suffers from Anton syndrome. He fixes his sightless gaze on my nose. My face is maybe just a pale spot, and maybe not even that, but Ezio is happy to see me again and he says––You look radiant. Your trip has really done you good!

I greet Demetra, Tiziano and Lizbet, who don't suffer from any syndrome. I greet Edo, Yassin, Pablo and Natzuko. I greet the children who cling to my legs. I greet the dogs and goats. In my thoughts I greet every animal and every plant in our orbit, in this world of splendid refugees, this nation gathered together in an old motorway café, above a deserted motorway, where the rare sight of a passing motor vehicle is a source of wonderment. This café that can still function as such, because we give sustenance and shelter to travelers, because we were all travelers before coming here from far and wide. Rejects. Rejects who every morning grab hold of the future by its tail to be pulled at speed out of the present, happy to be here, ready to face the day, to raise animals and cultivate crops, to teach and educate, to go off to explore and return to tell the story.

The middle of the night, a curved sliver of a moon and not a cloud in the sky. I stare down through a long window at the A1 motorway. Every stone, every slab, every nail and screw of the Cantagallo Café could tell millions of stories.

Here, in 1971, the workers went on a wildcat strike so that they wouldn't have to fill up the car belonging to Giorgio Almirante––a politician back then––or serve him coffee. A popular song, maybe one of the last ones, was written about it, and I can still remember the words:

Nowadays it seems like a myth from the Bronze Age.

––Who was Al Mirante? Nita asked me one summer's afternoon.

––He was the leader of the fascists.

––And who were the
fascists
?

It was here, on New Year's Eve 2002, that the first receipt was issued in the new currency, the euro. It was in the papers. The holder of this record was called Lorenzo. His purchase: a packet of chewing gum full of aspartame. Memento of the Second Age of Cancer.

––What was 'spartame? Pablo asked one autumn evening.

––Something sweet that was very harmful to people's health, but everybody ate and drank it.